Willow
Camp, Feather-branch Forest, Savriâ
The hours after reaching the site that the party, we should totally name our group, had chosen as a campsite, Willow found herself striking one rock against another. Naomi had pointed out a stone with a flat smooth plane on the edge and explained that it looked like flint, and showed them how to “knap” it. Though Naomi hadn’t been any more skilled in the process of smashing a harder rock into the relatively softer and more brittle flint, she’d at least known why they should do so.
Once it was clear that Willow’s manual dexterity and general control over her body’s motions made her the best at the task by far, Naomi had assigned it to her. Assigned as in asked very politely and made clear if Willow wanted to do something else, or nothing at all, she wouldn’t be complaining. She was a bit too polite, but Willow didn’t mind and was happy to be useful in this whole “stranded in the middle of nowhere” situation.
Naomi had taken the first “knife blade” Willow had completed, along with one of those vines and a small bit of dead wood. The others had watched, enthralled, as she carefully used the sharp rock to cut the two centimeter thick vine carefully into thin half centimeter strips, then braided them together. Her braiding was pretty clumsy, and Willow thought she could probably have done better given her practice with braiding her friends’ hair, but she just watched in interest.
Once the rough twine was ready, Naomi took the short piece of wood and the prospective knife blade, and used it to carefully bore a notch into the wood deep and wide enough to press the short and narrow part of the rock, opposite its tip into it. Once satisfied, she made two more on either side of the handle. Having made all the necessary cuts, she pressed the non-edge part of the blade into the hole she’d bored for it then took the makeshift twine and wrapped it in a careful alternating pattern around the carved end of the handle and down to the other two “holder” grooves she made.
The result was a rough knife that was impressively passable. Naomi had explained they could do the same thing to make other rough tools like Willow’s current project, a hand-axe.
While she was working at trying to create bunch of “blades” suitable for a list of tools Naomi had said they’d want, Kent and Naomi were gathering materials for fire and shelter. Naomi had been excited to find some creeping vines wrapped around about half of the trees, along with the bounty of dead wood on the forest floor.
Kent dropped a pile of the oddly uniform and smooth wood off to the side of the roughly ten meter diameter clearing they had chosen to make their temporary base. Every fallen piece of the feather-branch wood, what they had decided to name the trees until they learned its official name, was nearly the same. It seemed that these trees had an extremely strict self-pruning pattern. As soon as a branch got to about three meters in length, it appeared to break in half and fall to the forest floor. They weren’t exactly sure why they broke.
As far as any of them could see, most of the fallen branches were perfectly healthy. They had an ashy grey bark which was almost entirely smooth, as if sanded down to a perfect finish. It was still bark, rather than the tree’s exposed trunk, which was made clear by the fallen branches. Each had a ring inside the bark which was a darker almost black color indicating the tree’s actual lumber.
To make the odd uniformity even odder, the break point of each branch was almost identical with three main large jagged “teeth” around the edge, with almost a saw pattern when looking directly at the break. Each branch was curved about ten degrees from one edge to the other, with very little variation. The ends of each branch were decked in the unique feather-like leaves they had named the trees for. They looked like huge eagle feathers from a distance. Up close, they were a tightly interlocked weave of leaves and stems. The entire weave was somewhat flexible when pushed or pulled. The older and dried out weaves also ended up being extremely flammable and made excellent tinder.
Despite the oddness, the branches would make good materials for building a primitive shelter, provide them with fuel to fight any chill, and keep away dangerous animals.
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“Naomi, I’m sorry you got dropped through a portal with me… But holy Jesus am I happy you’re here. I don’t think I wouldn’t have even known what to do - much less how.” She stared at the other woman with as much gratitude on her face as she could manage. Naomi’s face flushed a red deep enough to be noticeable even in the light cast by their small campfire.
“It’s nothing really, it’s just all stuff I learned from games and TV shows…” She demurred, turning her eyes to the fire to avoid Willow’s gaze.
Kent tossed another couple branches, which they’d broken in half, into the fire to feed it and sat down on Naomi’s other side, “I agree with Willow. I’m not going to say I’d have died out here without you or anything, but the night certainly wouldn’t be as comfortable as it’s shaping up to be.”
Night had finally fallen, after a full twenty hours, and they were all exhausted. They’d also accomplished a lot. They had a good section of the forest foliage and grasses cleared in their campsite with a ring of stones between the size of a fist and the size of head. They’d dug the pit using a makeshift shovel, Kent had figured out how to make a reasonably useful shovel when Naomi had apologized for not knowing how. They also had a reasonable shelter in case of rain in the form of a lean-to. It would be extremely cramped with all three of them, but they’d tested to make sure it was comfortable enough for an emergency downpour.
“Well.. I’m glad I could be useful, at least…” Naomi’s voice was soft. If the three of them hadn’t elected to bunch together near the fire it was likely her words would have been lost in the soft, near-constant wind. Willow turned her eyes to the fire to avoid embarrassing her further.
The lean-to had actually been pretty fun to make. Since all of the fallen branches were already a uniform size, it’d really just been an exercise of notching and tying makeshift twine around the pieces to bind them together correctly. They worked together to figure out a pattern which allowed the natural mesh of the feathered foliage to fully cover them and theoretically keep off any rain from directly above or from the side where they’d positioned the leaning structure. They weren’t sure which cardinal direction it was facing, but had chosen based on observing which way the wind seemed to blow most consistently.
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“So, tomorrow… What’s our checklist?” Kent asked quietly. Willow looked back toward Naomi, finding Kent also looking at their elected leader.
The main issue they now faced was food and water. Willow had asked Naomi if they should go search for a stream or something after she was done knapping the flint into tools, but Naomi had argued that they should setup a base of operations first so they had a place to rest and take shelter. According to her, water was the next thing on the list but since they were all well fed and hydrated before arriving it shouldn’t be their first priority. Willow wasn’t entirely sure if that was right, but given Naomi hadn’t steered them wrong so far she was willing to give her the benefit of the doubt.
Naomi looked up, then between them, before taking a deep breath. She let it out slowly, clearly gathering her thoughts and nerves before speaking, “First priority should be water, then once we find water - food. If we find food first, say a berry bush or something, we should mark it on our UICI map and come back for it later.”
Kent nodded along, but Willow frowned, “Aren’t marking and labeling things premium features?” She pulled up her map as she spoke and was shocked to find a much more detailed map than she expected outlining the entire area they had traveled and explored while looking for a good camping spot. She could see their somewhat zig-zagging path through the dead grey clearing, where they entered the forest, and then the snake-like pattern they’d taken while following natural trails around the forest.
She looked up to find Kent and Naomi both looking at her with serious expressions. Uhhh… This seems ominous. “What?”
Answering slowly, Kent’s voice was a bit uncertain, “While you were unconscious back in Madrick’s room…” He hurried on as he noticed Willow’s eyes narrowing dangerously, “Ki’ai’en warned us that something like this would probably happen. He said he thought Madrick’s intention was probably to make you a student of his, and that his method of training is… What’d he say exactly? ‘Throw you into a marsh and see if you escape the snakes’? Yeah, something like that. Sink or swim kind of training.”
“That’s not training.” Willow’s protest was flat and emotionless, clearly just stating the fact out of a compulsion more than feeling her audience didn’t already know that.
“Ki’ai’en said he would purchase some important modules for Jonah and my accounts under our contracts as ‘required for our duties’.” Naomi picked up the story, “He said if Madrick made you a student we could use a stipend he setup for us to unlock yours as well, but mentioned in the unlikely event that Madrick made you a full disciple the UICI would automatically charge him to unlock features using some kind of ‘progression unlocks’ subscription thing.”
Nodding along, Jonah interjected, “He said it was part of the official disciple system built into the UICI. It gives a lot of benefits automatically, based on who your master is and what the level of their own rank and finances are at.”
Willow felt like she should have a thousand questions, and she should spend a portion of the night interrogating her comrades for every piece of information Kai had gifted them. She couldn’t. She was so tired. She’d been tired since she woke up in Madrick’s room, then she’d been exhausted after fighting the pop-hoppers, and now she was just running on fumes after the rest of the work she’d put in today.
Now she was happy they had spent so much time and effort on their camp and shelter. She was excited to drop onto the relativity soft “mattress” they’d thrown together using the feather-tree fronds. She yawned deeply. Standing, she brushed the dirt off of herself to the best of her abilities and smiled to the other two, “I’m going to go to bed… We should talk more about this tomorrow.”
They just nodded and watched her make her way to bed.
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Jonah
Camp, Feather-branch Forest, Savriâ
Once Willow had stopped shuffling around, apparently having managed to get comfortable in the lean-to, Jonah turned to look at Naomi and spoke quietly, “So ah… I guess you’re also thinking we shouldn’t tell her about the new contracts?”
Naomi sighed, “I don’t know. I don’t want to get into a stupid misunderstanding about something we could have just mentioned… But I don’t really know her well enough. What if she decides we’re a liability because we’re contracted to the Frazzlen and maybe she’d be better off without us ‘spying’?”
Jonah stared at her for a bit, surprised at even the thought. He probably wouldn’t have ever even considered a similar conspiracy. Primarily because, “Why would the faction care about spying on her? And why would she care if they did want to?” He was genuinely baffled at the idea. As far as he could tell, they were all the smallest of fish in the largest ocean imaginable.
Naomi, though, looked at him like he was stupid, “Because she’s Madrick’s disciple now? You heard how Ki’ai’en talked about him. That guy is a big deal. Don’t you know anything about intrigue?”
“Uh… No?”
“I thought you read books!”
“Sure, but the books I liked had strong MCs that just kind of blast through all of their problems with magic and might!” He waved his hand and made a “boom” movement with his hands as if to illustrate casting a fireball to explode the nearest problem.
Naomi sighed, “Well, as much as that Varsuth lady and Madrick may have made it seem like super powers and magic and stuff are all-important, we didn’t see anyone actually fighting. And if there’s one thing we can be sure about, it’s that the only thing that keeps people with a LOT more power from taking advantage of those without power is politics.”
For a moment they were quiet, until Jonah realized something important, “But they are taking advantage of us.” He looked at the icon on his UICI which, when focused on, popped up with a tooltip:
UNDER CONTRACT
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> View Contract?
> Query Contract Detail?
Naomi sighed, “Yeah, true… But we could have said no. Look at Willow, she clearly said no.”
“And she was still made into a disciple and dropped into a clearing with little monsters who wanted to eat her
A full five seconds of silence, “True.”
As they sat there, contemplating just what the driving favors of this new world was, Jonah realized her was still somehow happier and more fulfilled than he had been for the last years of working his day job and drowning himself in media.